Two kinds of joy

Last weekend I went with Debbie to a meditation retreat.  I enjoyed it … part of me wants to say it was restful, but in fact I was exhausted when we got back.  But the quiet and clarity were delightful, and I can see why people love it so much.  Some of the people there were actually monastics – Buddhist monks – and of course that takes “loving it” to a whole new level.  Maybe not quite something I aspire to.  Still, it was a good way to spend the weekend.

Saturday evening there was a kind of “talent show” or fun get-together of all the guests at the retreat, where people could tell jokes or stories, recite poems, or whatever they felt like.  For a few minutes I debated internally about quoting the Sarah Teasdale poem on my sidebar, but finally decided against it.  The turbulence, or urgency, or passion of that last stanza seemed somehow out of place in a retreat devoted to calm, quiet, and mindfulness.

And yet, I wasn’t completely happy with that answer.  After all, Teasdale’s poem talks about the years of strife being in the service of that “one white, shining hour of peace”.  The hour of peace can’t be out of place as a Buddhist goal, and more than once the event organizers repeated that without suffering there can be no compassion.  So it was a puzzle, and I spent some time puzzling over it.

I’m not sure I came to any profound resolution, but in the process I did see a totally unexpected commonality between the way of passion and the way of mindfulness.  And over the next couple of days I tried to spell it out.  I came up with this:

The forest’s dry as tinder. Just a spark,

And all the hill will come alive with flame –

A shining beacon, bright against the dark,

That swallows whole your home and life and name.

Just so it is with passion. Once alight,

All obstacles restraining it are lost.

Friends, reputation, family, sense of right –

Joy torches in a smoking holocaust.

For quiet, seek the Joy of mindfulness:

A candle sheltered from the blust’ring storm –

No death nor ruin, anguish nor distress –

No bonfire, but a lamp that’s light and warm.

Yet e’en this lamp will burn up all you have.

For if you chase this Joy to where it lives,

You’ll leave your home, your work, your kin, your love,

Your very name when Dharm’ a new name gives.

What mystery for wise men to admire:

Why Joy must be an all-consuming fire!